Yesterday I heard an analyst say yesterday we are 2 steps from WWIII. The worst thing we can do is move military assets close to the Ukraine border. We don't have 5% of what's needed to deter Putin militarily and his likely response is a build up on his side.

All NATO is doing is monitoring Soviet (I mean Putinista) action. Putin’s bed wetting supporters on FReeRepublic will crack and cry here, but steady people should not let this minor measure bother them.

There are loyalty issues in the Ukrainian military, that are sure to complicate issues should they come to blows with Russia. Many units will defect to Russia, and many will not have the stomach to fight (Especially those from the East).

All NATO is doing is monitoring Soviet (I mean Putinista) action. Putins bed wetting supporters on FReeRepublic will crack and cry here, but steady people should not let this minor measure bother them.

You should go work for the Ukrainian government. Unless you already do.

13
posted on 03/10/2014 11:41:50 AM PDT
by McGruff
(Republicans need to show Obama some RSPECT.)

This is not about troops and materiel ratio. Russia’ economy will crumble under the weight of war, occupation and having to feed the occupied territories population. For Russia it will be a war of aggression, for Ukraine -the war of liberation. Not everybody in Russia has the stomack for it. Us does not have to get involved militarily.

16
posted on 03/10/2014 11:48:50 AM PDT
by Mi-kha-el
((There is no Pravda in Izvestiya and no Izvestiya in Pravda.))

"Nato is to deploy reconnaissance planes in Poland and Romania to monitor the Ukrainian crisis."

O-M-G! Those Nato guys are true idiots. I don't see HOW they will "monitor the Ukrainian crisis", especially the South and Eastern russophone Ukraine, by flying over Poland and Romania. They can't even read a geographical map!

They will only "monitor" the nazi groups, strongly implemented in Lwov region, near the Poland border. More cretinous Nato gesticulation: "I'll show you! I'll send 5 more planes and a division of wild geeze!" ROFLMAO.

In my opinion, we are doing this solely for Poland and NATO, not for Ukraine. Poland is worried and invoked the NATO treaty. We’re reminding Russia that Poland is “[NATO] alliance territory” (which it certainly is). The Ukrainians will need to take care of themselves, I don’t see us coming to their aid anytime soon.

First, I’m guessing the E-3s for this mission will be drawn from the NATO AWACS wing at Gilenkirchen, Germany—total of 18 aircraft. Two are normally deployed to Afghanistan, and they usually keep an aircraft in Norway or Sicily to reduce over-crowding on the ramp, and to give the crews a paid vacation. So, no more than 15 aircraft for the mission, and when you factor in maintenance, other deployments and similar factors, the number of jets is no more than a dozen. Enough for 24 hour ops over Poland, but there are some “limits” when it comes to the NATO E-3 force.

First, the alliance doesn’t want Vlad to shut off the gas pipelines or take any other drastic measures, so the AWACS orbit will be well back of the Polish border. Effective range of the E-3 radar is less than 300 miles—about half the distance from Krakow to Kiev. In other words, Russian air activity in eastern Ukraine and the Crimea will be outside the coverage of a NATO E-3 over Poland.

It’s also worth remembering that NATO AWACS is a composite force, with crews and support personnel from throughout the alliance. Most of them are unionized and they will only work so much. I was an aircrew on a USAF battle management platform during the Balkans operation in the 1990s. We were a one-of-a-kind squadron with only a handful of aircraft and crews, yet we maintained 1-2 orbits a day with less than half the resources of NATO AWACS. And we were overland Bosnia (with only limited data on the whereabouts of Serb SA-6 batterys), while the E-3s stayed over the Adriatic or Hungary.

One Saturday morning, we were on-station over Bosnia when we heard the “overnight” NATO AWACS extended on their orbit. They finally hit bingo fuel and had to return to Germany, with no replacement on the Hungary orbit. That left the British E-3 (Adriatic orbit) to run the show. I flew a couple of missions with those guys on my various rotations and the Brits were very, very good. Most had decades of ground-based radar experience and tours in NATO AWACS, so their controllers were excellent.

We assumed that the “missing” AWACS had some sort of maintenance problem that kept it on the ground, and when it finally arrived on station (about five hours late), nothing was said. We later found out the reason behind their delay; a lot of the NATO crew members from the “less reliable” members of the alliance (i.e., anyone who wasn’t American, British, German or Dutch) had been grumbling about the heavy workload so they staged a “wild cat strike” on the Saturday mission. Most of the mission crew simply didn’t show up, so they patched together a crew of Americans, Brits and Germans to fly the mission.

It’s that kind of mindset that guides most NATO AWACS operations. One of the guys I flew with was a career AWACS type who went to Gilenkirchen after years at Tinker. He reported in to an empty orderly room on a Thursday afternoon. Come back next Monday, said the admin NCO (a Belgian), “we’re busy.”

Elect a Constitutional conservative President, and a TEApublican Congress and see what happens around the world.

This is only a good first step. And not a guaranteed reality at that.

This is a bottom-up country, always has been. What the people decide to have happen is what will happen, despite whatever delusions of Godhood any current Oval Office jockey may be afflicted with. And the people may be starting to build momentum toward an Article V Convention of the Several States. This is appearing to be the only option available to the people to right the ship of state.

There are loyalty issues in the Ukrainian military, that are sure to complicate issues should they come to blows with Russia. Many units will defect to Russia, and many will not have the stomach to fight (Especially those from the East).

Pravda is suggesting loyalty issues, but they are not in widespread evidence even in the Crimea, which is majority Russian (as opposed to merely Russian-speaking). Ukrainian military units in the Crimea remain under central government control. They're not fighting probably under strict government orders because they'd be annihilated since they are (1) behind enemy lines, (2) outgunned and (3) outnumbered. They remain in the Crimea as symbols of Ukraine's continued claim to the territory. The majority ethnic Ukrainians in the east might lean one way or another vis-a-vis foreign relations, but just as Russian-speaking Israelis are ultimately loyal to Israel, even if they might favor Russia in the foreign policy realm, Russian-speaking Ukrainians should have few issues as regards their allegiance to the Ukrainian state. Note that Pravda's assertion that the entire Ukrainian Navy had defected to Russia was wrong.

35
posted on 03/10/2014 6:20:14 PM PDT
by Zhang Fei
(Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)

Are you of Russian origin? If so, I understand the tribal reflexes. For anybody else who follows geopolitics closely, it's clear that the Russian seizure of the Crimea has the potential to become the second iteration of the German seizure of the Sudetenland. Like many of the old and large imperial powers (including China and Iran), Russian has its native tradition of "mission civilisatrice" - a world-conquering tradition to bring civilization to the benighted heathens, while drenching the Russian state/sovereign in martial glory. Man does not live by bread alone, and this was why Germany embarked on WWI and WWII at a time when Germany was the most productive, on a GDP per capita basis, major country in Europe.

36
posted on 03/10/2014 6:34:00 PM PDT
by Zhang Fei
(Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)

Does this provide the western part of Ukraine with a way to direct its interceptors towards incoming Russian bogeys on a timely basis? Assuming the Russians kick off an invasion of eastern Ukraine and start by knocking off Ukraine's ground-based radar installations with HARM-type munitions.

38
posted on 03/10/2014 7:14:02 PM PDT
by Zhang Fei
(Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)

"If we can stay the hell out of this long enough, Russia may well collapse the UN. And the EU as power blocs. WITHOUT killing half the continent. Which we would ALL benefit from. Anyone ever consider that? Anyone ever consider that is why Barry and McCain are so hell bent on getting us involved?"

No. barry and Mccain are bound by an agreement to protect Ukraine. it's that simple.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said a group of about 20 pro-’Russian activists’ from the so-called ‘Crimea self-defense squads’ had broken into the military hospital in the region’s main administrative city, Simferopol, and thrown out its chief.

In a later statement, it said the hospital chief was back at work after negotiations but added the premises were being blockaded ‘by the activists’.

However a CNN team that traveled to the hospital found it very quiet, with no one around. A guard on duty said he had not heard or seen anything unusual and that there was no senior official to speak with as Monday was a public holiday.

Russia, meanwhile, accused far-right groups Monday of “conniving” with the new authorities in Ukraine.
In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry condemned “lawlessness” in eastern Ukraine and accused the West of being silent over violence and detentions taking place against Russian citizens,

Would Obama, in retaliation for Crimea, forbid NASA to participate to ISS missions? That will show him, Putin, who’s the “boss”! I remind you that the US manned and unmanned missions to ISS rely exclusively on Russian rocketry.

The problem from the get go is Journalists and citizens alike cannot tell one group from the other....and there are many active in Ukraine...they just assume it's Putins Russian Military or The Ukranian Military when in fact it's often neither..

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